Schools prescribing birth control?

A middle school in Maine has made the decision to prescribe birth control pills to its female students without requiring parental consent.

The school in question is one of the few schools in the district to have an on-site clinic, apparently because of the high percentage of students eligible for free and reduced lunches. I discussed the ramifications of the nanny state in the school and the slippery slope of allowing the government to offer additional, non-education-related services to students a few days ago. This is quite clearly another case.

I went to middle school and high school in an urban area - the high school I attended was over 60% African-American, and was gang-infested. I understand the problems many kids have coping with that environment, the tremendous amount of peer pressure, and goodness knows I made quite a few stupid choices myself during my middle school and high school years. Many of the students are not going to have two positive parental role models, and many of the students will be lucky to even have one. And sure, an eleven-year-old is not emotionally mature to make choices about sex and birth control, although she's probably going to be already making some choices about sex at that age. But putting the schools in the position of providing birth control to students is opening too many cans of worms.

First, there are the implications of having the school step in as an authority that may be circumventing parental wishes. I think it's likely that at least a few parents who don't want their child receiving birth control will refuse to sign the parental consent form allowing their child access to the clinic. This will decrease the student population that is served by the clinic. For instance, if Catholic students attend King Middle School, it's possible their parents will no longer allow them to seek health care from the school clinic. I'm pretty 'liberal' when it comes to birth control, but I think I'd be furious if my child went to her school clinic and was offered birth control. Offering a kid birth control is going to lead at least a few kids to think they need to use it, maybe earlier than they would have if it wasn't shoved in their faces.

Second, does the school really not have educational needs to spend their money on?

And third, can the school afford the financial and political ramifications if a student has medical problems due to taking birth control pills the school has prescribed? I don't think that when my daughter is eleven I will have discussed the medical reasons I had to stop taking the very birth control pills the CNN article uses as a graphic, or how taking the pill made both me and my mother so hormonally insane that it almost ruined our lives before we each clued in (at about the same time - my mother was on the pill as a hormone replacement late in life) that we were poisoning ourselves with birth control pills.

I know that denying a young girl birth control probably won't stop her from having sex - if anything, it's likely to make her act out even more. But schools have to stop trying to take over every aspect of parental responsibilities. If the Portland School District feels so strongly about having birth control available to students, maybe they should ask Planned Parenthood about putting offices near existing schools. This would allow the school district to continue to provide health services to in-need students without parents having to worry about whether birth control is being offered to their children against parental wishes, the school won't be opening themselves up for a lawsuit when a girl drops dead of a blood clot or starts acting out because the pill made her crazy.

And they wonder why the district thinks they can send these out...

Denver Public Schools recently got itself into some hot water by sending a sealed letter home with a student informing the student's mother that the student was overweight. Of course, the child opened it and supposedly became distressed - perhaps she wasn't aware she had a weight problem?

I've seen comments on some blogs asking why in the world Denver Public Schools thinks they can engage in this sort of personal life interference. I'm guessing some of the same people who are up in arms over this are also up in arms in favor of the proposed expansion of the S-CHIP program.

70.7% of Centennial K-8's students were eligible (PDF warning) for free or reduced lunches in the 2005-2006 school year. To be eligible for free or reduced lunches, a student's family must be at or below 130% of poverty level. To qualify for the state CBHP health plan (PDF warning again), the student must be at or below 200% of poverty level.

What this means is that well over 70% of the students in Centennial K-8 qualify for state-funded health care.

With the government providing lunches and health insurance to a large portion of these kids, is it any wonder that the government feels a well-meaning obligation to do what they can to reduce those insurance costs?

Years ago, I did volunteer work at an HIV-testing clinic that also provided services to disabled people who needed mental health, physical health or housing services. My work there was a big part of what turned me from a bleeding heart into a conservative - seeing people use food stamps to buy pork rinds and candy bars and then asking for more more more because their food stamps were gone by was disenheartening. Even more disenheartening was taking a poor mom who had no food for her kids grocery shopping a few years ago and having her get mad and yelling at me in the grocery store because I wasn't willing to add twelve-packs of soda to the grocery bill.

I understand that there are many families out there who use their state and federal provided funds as wisely as they can. But parents who don't spoil it for everyone and make the government act as a nanny state to reduce the poor use of government funds. If we keep expanding government-funded health care, don't be surprised if we start seeing more and more cases where Big Brother is telling us how to raise our kids.